TITLE: Why I Write By Karen Boyd 11/23/05 |
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why do I write? I write because I can sit here and speak to no one, and no one has to listen to me. Because it's the only way I can create, it is the only power I have in this world of powerlessness.
Statues are made of a medium, and if I sculpted one, I would have made the clay or the stone. I didn't make the words or the paper upon which they sit, but the graphite is not the focus of writing. The focus is the world, the plot, the characters. and those I create. I follow a form, a template called reality. I don’t have to use the mold, but I do, because it is the simplest, and I can create more than an environment. I can quit wasting my time on invention and instead on pure manipulation of the things around it all. In no other outlet can I create.
Even if I try a half-creation, like a statue, I fail. The ability isn't there. I write because I am able. Ability is a powerful thing as well. Ability is a gift. Not everyone is able to do everything, ablity is a selective thing. Ability is a proof of God, the perfect, strategic, meaningful distribution of ability is one more little sliver of absolute-ness that God slid into our world to show us who He is.
I write because I can communicate. I can share, i can take something from my head and convey it to another. No distracting ornamentation, like verbal explaination has. Talking is done in reality, in an environment. influences abound: cars driving by, a squirrel on a fence post, physcial gestures, outfits, the sky, details! Creation! The world is present in conversations, it’s a third party. The world is precious and amazingly intricate, and perfectly distracting. When a person reads what another has written, the world is still present, granted. But the world no longer is surrounding them. They are still part of the world, the medium on which the words stand is part of it, too, but a page! A page is a glorious thing. It concentrates. When focused ona piece of paper, all one sees is the paper, and what is on it. If it is colorful and distracting, then so it is. But if it is simple, and black and white and streamlined and boring, the words are the only beauty! The ideas can get from one mind to another with less obstacles; the only ones left are the ones that either you or I set up with bad writing or bad listening.
I write because I love. I love my God, I love to write, I love to relax, I love to be in pain, I love to be in ecstacy, I love to sing and cut and type and scribble and eat and laugh and walk and doodle and scream and shake my hair in the breeze while the wind takes it up into its hands, twirling it on its vague fingers.
I write because there are things that can not be made captive by anything but words. Ideas, objects, details, qualities, feelings... Things to be loved and to be hated. Things that bring joy and bring sorrow. Black things and red things and blue things, and great things with flourescent polka dots and erratic brown stripes. I write because I can write in a thousand different places in sentence or discourse on one square inch for pages. I write because God made geraniums and weeping willows and roses and tulips and moss and grass and a world full of things I will never know. I write because i am ignorant of most of the world. I write because my reason for writing changes everyday, and I could write everyday about why i write and not run out of fresh reasons, new everyday. I write because God gave me the passion and the will.
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